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Media Business News and Trends

Advantage Business Media, LLC has purchased Vicon Publishing, Inc. Vicon Publishing will be renamed Vicon Business Media, Inc. and will operate as a subsidiary of Advantage. The acquisition expands Advantage's offering of publications concerning laboratory and forensics sciences.

Barnes & Noble plans to "pursue strategic exploratory work to separate the Nook business" from the rest of the company, as reported on paidContent. In a statement, the company said, "There can be no assurance that the review of a potential separation of the NOOK digital business will result in a separation. There is no timetable for the review...."

According to court papers filed this week, Amazon has reportedly resolved its lawsuit with Smartphones Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Acacia Research Corp., and the companies have asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit. According to an article on paidContent, no terms of the settlement are mentioned in the court filings, nor do they offer further explanation as to why the companies have ended the lawsuit.

From an outsider's perspective, being a professional freelance writer may seem like the dream job. After all, you can make your own hours, work from the comfort of home (or from your local Starbucks), and handpick which projects you want to pursue based on your level of expertise or interest. Those who are active in the field know this is far from true. For many freelancers, finding a job that appropriately compensates their level of skill, and relaying that job into a steady gig takes patience, perseverance, and a whole lot of practice writing query letters. But there's good news for freelancers. The market is changing.

The United States International Trade Commission (ITC) announced it would grant a limited import ban on certain HTC devices, siding with Apple on its allegations of patent violations. The ban will go into place automatically after April 19, 2012. Though Apple accused HTC of violating four patents, the ITC asserted that only one was violated.

Speech technology company Nuance Communications, Inc. is set to purchase Vlingo, Inc., a mobile voice software firm. Financial terms have not been disclosed. Nuance was previously suing Vlingo for patent infringement and planned to appeal a jury's ruling after Vlingo was found not guilty.

Calcalist, a Hebrew-language newspaper, has reported that Apple, Inc. closed on a deal for Anobit, a 200-employee Israeli company that makes flash memory technology. Although the final terms of the acquisition remain unknown, Calcalist places the deal in the $400 million to $500 million range.

The New York Times Co. is in the process of selling its Regional Media Group, responsible for 16 regional newspapers and other print publications and related businesses, to Halifax Media Group, of Daytona Beach, Fla. The group's average daily circulation is 433,251.

Skyword, a content farm, secured $6 million in funding from Cox Media Group, Inc., a broadcasting, publishing, direct marketing, and digital media company. Cox is the sole investor in the company, and a Cox representative, not yet publicly named, will join Skyword's board of directors.

It's been a busy year for U.K. media. It started off with the pomp and ceremony of the Royal Wedding, moved to the embarrassing unravelling of News Corp. over a phone-hacking scandal, and ended with the devastating riots, which started in North London and then inspired copycat lawlessness in cities across the country for a few alarming days in August. When you look at it all written out like that, it's a wonder we survived at all!

Hot gossip, recipes, cute baby photos and juicy tidbits about office Christmas party shenanigans aren't the only things being shared on Facebook these days. Many folks actually use the social network king to pass on interesting news articles, too. In fact, a look at what made the list of the top 40 most shared articles on Facebook in 2011 can offer some interesting clues to publishers and media outlets as to what makes a story "shareable."

ebrary announced the results of its Download Survey for which it asked more than 1,000 participating librarians about mobile and offline access to ebooks. Patrons value the portability of ebooks, which led 92% of respondents to say that providing offline access to ebooks was at least as important as providing online access to them, if not more so.

CBS Local Digital Media announced a partnership with Examiner.com that will result in the delivery of original lifestyle content to local audiences, according to paidContent. The collaborative editorial pieces, which will focus on "Best Of" guides and "Top Spots" lists, will be written by local writers and published on CBS's locally targeted properties.

The Authors Guild filed a motion for class certification in its first step on a new path of litigation after the rejection of the proposed Google Books Settlement, according to paidContent. A procedural step in any class-action lawsuit, the class certification ensures the lawsuit is brought on the behalf of all U.S. authors whose copyrighted work Google has scanned.

While the Apple App Store was already available in Latin America, the iTunes Store, offering music and movie downloads, has launched in Brazil, according to paidContent. The store brings a catalog of over a thousand movies and 20 million songs by both local and international artists.

TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc. has partnered with Spain's national daily newspaper El País, part of Ediciones El País, SL, to produce a Spanish-language local edition, El Huffington Post. The deal closed last Thursday. The Spanish edition will be based out of El País' offices.

Pearson, PLC is selling its 50-percent stake in the FTSE International Ltd. to the London Stock Exchange, PLC for £450 million ($700 million) in cash. Currently, Pearson and London Stock Exchange Group each own 50 percent of FTSE. The sale is expected to close by 1Q 2012.

LivingSocial is reportedly in the process of raising $400 million to support its operations, according to Daily Deal Media. This round of funding could bring the daily deals provider's value to about $6 billion. In November, Venture Capital Dispatch reported all of LivingSocial's major investors would contribute to the round.

Facebook has launched a counter lawsuit against Timelines, Inc., the company that sued Facebook for trademark infringement in September after Facebook announced its new feature called Timeline. Facebook's countersuit argues that "timeline" is not a valid trademark because it is a generic term, one that is used in features on at least 10 other websites, including Google.

Wolters Kluwer Health acquired Medknow Publications, an open access (OA) STM journal publisher based in India, in a deal that expands its Medical Research business to developing markets. The acquisition also increases Wolters Kluwer Health's offering of locally written content.

Amazon.com, Inc. and Marshall Cavendish, an educational and consumer book publishers and classroom digital solutions providers, announced that Amazon has signed a deal to acquire over 450 titles of its US Children's trade books business, Marshall Cavendish Children's Books (MCCB).

Clearwire Corp. will offer $300 million in Class A common stock in a public offering. Clearwire plans to grant underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional $45 million of the same stock. J.P. Morgan, BofA Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc., and Jefferies & Co., Inc., are acting as joint book-running managers.

AboutOne, LLC, an online family management system, closed a $1.6-million-dollar deal in Series A financing. The round was led by Golden Seeds, a network of investors dedicated to funding early-stage companies founded and led by women.